Yeah, that was one of those posts I sometimes see and say, "WHAT???"
When I used a Mac, I ended up testing OpenOffice in Windows under VirtualPC, so it doesn't make any sense that it would run better on the Mac now. A look at OpenOffice.org will tell you that the current OS X release is an Alpha release -- hardly what I would want to mass-deploy (not if I value my job, anyway)!!!
Too bad you didn't post with your real identity because you could be my twin. I left college years ago to pursue opportunities that wouldn't come again, I ended up as the I.T. Director for this $100 million company, then I went back and finished my degree at the University of Phoenix. I still have a strong, advancing career and I'm thinking of going back to get another degree -- as another poster said, they're just pieces of paper, like insurance.
The KEY is whatever strategy you take, do NOT let it significantly hurt your career. Good jobs like we have don't disappear as easily as some posters suggest, and it's damn hard to find a good job today, with or without a degree.
Satellite:
-- 2a : a celestial body orbiting another of larger size
I think based on these common definitions that these objects, assuming they
are found be natural and that they can be proved to orbit Earth, should be
called moons. Maybe they don't fit our cultural, unwritten definition of a
Moon, but that doesn't change the facts. So, maybe we need to change
what most people think of as the Moon...
No, I think the proper description for Jar Jar in Episode II is "Big Asshole Tool of Evil".
If you saw it, you'll be glad like me that they minimized his presence, but pissed like me that this dumb-shit known as "Jar Jar" ended up unwittingly helping the "Dark Side".
After watching the movie, I just thought That's why he was in Episode I, because they had to have a scapegoat!! Kind of a lame plot-twist, though.
OK, maybe I should just let this ignorant post go, but I can't:
The IRONY of the original post is that people who CAN'T or WON'T read BOOKs/manuals will cause the price of BOOKshelves to go up. Get it? Get the joke? Ha ha! sheesh...
These price differences are pretty damn small -- yeah, if I order it I can save a few dollars (after shipping costs), but who cares?
Oh and speaking of price "discrimination", you can buy a REAL Coca-Cola in Vietnam for $0.02 -- but over there you're lucky to make over $100/month (if you have a job at all). It's not discrimination, it's MARKETING.
Another Vietnam story -- some American-born Vietnamese guys went back to Vietnam with their families and decided that the quality of the coffee there was horrible compared to what we have in America (yeah, the 2ND largest producer of coffee in the world has horrible coffee). So, they decided to do the Vietnamese people a great service and bring Starbucks-style coffee to Vietnam in a relatively big business venture.
The problem that these ignorant Americans didn't think of (yes, they were Vietnamese, but they were born here in America and have the same problem a lot of Americans have of being ignorant of foreign cultures) was that their Starbucks-style coffee ended up costing Starbucks-style prices -- $3-5/drink. In Vietnam, their standard Cafe Sua Da (iced coffee with sugar-milk) costs $0.01-$0.02/DRINK! So, these guys' primary customers ended up being American tourists -- needless to say, business is not booming for them.
This was a big joke when I told people here about this, and an even bigger joke when I talked to our family in Vietnam about it on our last trip there. Not that they don't love Americans, but the idea that they would pay even $3 for a cup of coffee (equivalent to an American who makes $2500/month paying $75 for a cup of coffee) was ludicrous.
The bottom line of all this is that simple economics is the primary driving factor of product pricing -- and for good reason.
Sorry, I forgot that it did say they studied 240 people between the age of 6 and 29.
But, the skeptical questions remain:
How long? What type of video games? Are these "normal" people or do they have problems? If they already had problems before the study, then did their problems increase significantly over the course of the looonnng study?
Also, someone mentioned that strategy games involve repetitive strategy and no real creative thought??? Gimme a break, how many have you played? I haven't played a single GOOD strategy game that was the same twice! If you can boil down your winning strategy to an automated series of clicks and maneuvers, the game is crappy and will last a matter of days. You can't convince me that people sit there robotically doing the same thing over and over again for MONTHS to play these games because I've played them for years. It's not that DULL... (click... BOOM... click... BOOM... etc.)
There are two many medical studies that draw direct conclusions from data when often the consistant occurrance of two effects together are caused by something completely different that the researcher never thought about.
For instance, people who drink one glass of wine a day have fewer heart attacks. But, maybe the real reason is that most of those wine drinkers they STUDIED make more money, take more vitamins, and generally watch their health better. Few doctors will mention that.
They also still don't know why EXACTLY Japanese women, before they move to America, have a lower rate of breast cancer than native Americans, and the descendants of those Japanese women also have a rate of breast cancer similar to other Americans (because they are native Americans at that point). Why? Because their Japanese? Because they eat more fish and less red meat than we do?
Also, with a controversial study like this, you always have to ask, "How many people DID you study and for how many years?". That important little fact seems to be absent from this article -- I've seen too many supposedly legitimate studies over the past 10-15 years that study 50 people over 2 years and call that "conclusive research" on humans. I hate to tell any scientists out there this, but accurate human research takes DECADES on a reasonable number of people (i.e. NOT 50).
When do scientists cross the line between science and tabloid news? I think more scientists need to learn...
Actually, it's about 800,000 people -- with all those 10 person families' kids leaving the state every year, they need the help (the population never rises even though the average family size is about 8).
I agree that the PDA-Phone has not yet "come of age" because it's just too damn big and clumsy. Not to mention that most normal humans use a phone more than a PDA. The Phone-PDA is a much more viable solution TODAY for most people because the honest truth is that many more people need a mobile phone with limited PDA functions than they need a mobile PC with limited phone functions.
The fact is that TODAY a PDA with add-on phone functions or add-on GPS functions or add-on camera functions is simply much worse than a dedicated device. A PDA is only good TODAY as a dedicated organizer or mini-computer (Palm or PocketPC).
That's why Nokia's solutions work and the Treo solutions do not -- the reason is that Nokia makes Phone-PDA's and Handspring makes PDA-Phones.
I don't know about lockpick sets, but you can buy LED lights at Fry's here in California for about $20. They are heavy-duty, small, and very bright, so they are perfect as emergency lights (the batteries they use have a shelf-life of 10 years) for car, home, etc. You could probably use it for illegal purposes, but like ANY tool, it's up to the user how they use it.
My God, I posted a negative review for The Sims on PCGR.com (PC Game Review) basically saying what most of the negative comments in this thread have said, so I feel the same way.
But, I can't say all computer games or video games are a "waste". I have been a Sim-freak for more than 10 years going back to the first SimCity. I love ALL of the Sim games except this Piece Of Shit. Because:
THE POINT OF A SIMULATION GAME IS TO BE OR CONTROL THINGS YOU CAN'T DO IN REAL LIFE!!!
SimAnt -- Cool to control and half-way understand an ant colony SimCity Classic & 2000 -- way cool to create and destroy SimTower -- pretty cool to simulate the economics of a big tower, but limited. SimIsle -- cool, but limited like SimTower SimFarm -- same as SimIsle or SimTower SimGolf -- hmm, cool only because there's no chance I'll ever own a golf course. SimLife -- waay cool simulating genetics and evolution SimEarth -- cool like SimLife, but on a larger planetary scale.
The point is that the sim/game allows you to be or do something that you probably could never do. So that's why I've come to the conclusion that only losers would enjoy The Sims because if I don't waste my time on the game I have a good chance of doing everything the Sims do in the game. Only losers would not have the prospect of ever buying stereos, big screen TV's, using certain paints on their house, or planting certain plants in their garden. Or, my God, having real inter-personal relationships with real human beings.
But then I come to the question of, "How is it that these losers have computers to play the game and post these pro-Sims messages on Slashdot.org???"
Oh well, at this point, I don't give a shit because they're losers so I'll stop trying to figure it out and get back to my real life...
Careful there, don't generalize by going from stating that "there is nothing big business will not do to grab money" to stating that "investing in stocks is a bigger gamble than playing the ponies". That's a stretch because you are equating Lucent's actions in this case to not only other big companies, but to all other companies who are publicly traded. That's an incredible over-exaggeration.
It's this kind of thinking that causes good company's stocks to go down regardless of what they are doing or how big, small, or honest they are. And that's part of what is hurting our economy now. Take statements like yours seriously because some people really are weak-minded enough to simply believe them as-is...
Hmm, sounds like Georgia Tech works at least a little like the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology (or SDSM&T), a top-5 engineering college when I went there 12 years ago. I was given an F in two classes one semester in my Sophomore year (Calc III and Comp Sci III) even though I had a B average in one class and an A average in the other. Why? Because each of the professors didn't feel that I REALLY KNEW or UNDERSTOOD the material of the class. Even though I had received A's and B's on all their tests.
I was so shocked, but didn't realize until later when I left that the university actually had a policy that final grades were at the sole discression of the professor -- they have no checks and balances. So, if the professor has a problem with you, you have no choice but to take a class with another professor and accept the impact on your GPA. The Math professor probably didn't like my getting B's in his class while sleeping half the time and the Comp Sci professor probably didn't like the fact that I always got perfect scores even though I put practically no effort into it (these classes were THAT easy). So, their response was to flunk me.
Needless to say, I tried to work it out one more semester, couldn't (because, as noted above, there WAS no way to work it out -- they said "F" and that was the last word), and took the opportunity the next semester to move to California and finish my Comp Sci degree in a REAL university (Cal Poly). I honestly didn't know any better when I was at SDSM&T and thought it was my fault, but every prof and student I've known since then were very surprised that an American university had this kind of problem -- most universities would fire professors immediately for this kind of bizarre prejudice.
I don't think its a coincidence that, 12 years later, SDSM&T isn't even in the top 100 engineering colleges/universities in the U.S. The moral of this story is: talk to people who go to the university before you decide to go there, and you ALWAYS have the right to be treated fairly.
P.S.... If anybody reading this is (unfortunately) already going to SDSM&T and wants the names of the professors to avoid, e-mail me and I'll let you know -- they're still there, and I'm sure they're still the same a**holes.
There's always word-on-the-street that Apple is working on something users want -- don't believe it until you see it AND can buy it. There have been too many rumors in the past that some idiot got out of some Apple employee by getting them drunk at a popular restaurant near Apple's HQ.
Sure, Apple works on a lot of stuff and a lot of employees know about and work on that stuff personally, but whether or not that stuff ever makes it to market is always a HUGE "if" with Apple...
As a "native American" (having grown up in this great country), the only thought going through my mind after seeing and hearing the details of what happened this morning are that death can only be answered with death. You can ask "When does it stop?" all you want, but that simple concept remains and has kept us safer than most in this world for decades.
Anyone in this world MUST be made to fully understand that attacks like this one on our fellow American citizens can only be answered with the total annihilation of the perpetrators, whoever they are. There can be no compromise on this, no yielding. They must understand that when they kill some of our citizens, we will swiftly kill ALL of them in response and we will NEVER stop until they are completely destroyed. One way or another, they must understand that an act of violence like we painfully witnessed today is just not worth it.
For us American citizens, we have to remember to be strong and united. MOST non-native American citizens are here because they love this country and sincerely want to be here (I should know, my wife and most of our friends are foreigners), so racist "witch-hunts" are unacceptable in response to this event. And if the end-result of this is a war against anyone standing against us then we must ALL be prepared for those consequences. I don't want my sons to be pulled into any war resulting from this any more than anyone else, but if that is what it comes to then so be it.
My family will stand up without hesitation to fight for this country as we have in generations past -- after this difficult day, we must all remember what it means to be American citizens.
I think the point here is that it is not the NORM. I've worked at about 20 different companies over the past 15 years (took me a while in the beginning to settle on a career path) and I've NEVER seen a company-led prayer. I know America is different wherever you go, but I really can't believe this is a norm for the country as a whole (I'm from South Dakota and currently live in California and I've seen a lot in-between).
What do we do? One sentence -- don't buy it! We're not talking about life and death here; if they don't wanna play nice then we just don't have to play!
Most people don't care about it anyway and will simply dub copies via analog methods because that's the way they do it now. If the RIAA wants revenue from digital customers then they better get their shit together, that's all I can say...
You may be informed on the options, I may be informed, the average slashdot reader may be informed, but I guarantee you the average Napster user *IS*NOT*.
You are just plain wrong on this. All you have to do is listen to the radio to hear them talking *EVERY*DAY* about the biggest Napster alternatives like iMesh, Gnutella, OpenNap, etc. I've heard these names over and over again every day on "normal" radio for the past few weeks because of the Napster trial. How do you think Napster got so popular? Word-Of-Mouth.
You want proof of this? Go to any of these big alternatives (or listen to the interviews on the radio) and you'll see they are handling more traffic in some cases than Napster EVER did. But now instead of one (Napster) there are SEVERAL for the RIAA to worry about.
Sorry, this is not going away no matter how much ANYBODY wants it to...
These other initiatives may be gaining some users, but it will be months before their combined user base is as large as napster's. It'll be a real natural selection process over the next few months as the ones that suck lose members to the ones that rock, and the ones that rock get cease and decsist orders as a result.
You sound like you haven't even looked at any of these alternatives -- check your information before posting. iMesh alone had more MP3's (number of terabytes) available than Napster ever did. And that's only one service. There's no way to attack Gnutella and iMesh sounds the same (they don't see any of the traffic to know what's going on, they just provide the link-up information to the users). They could attack these alternatives like the DVD decryption hack was attacked (attack all individual hosting sites), but the fact that I can still download it from one of dozens of places shows how futile that strategy is.
Personally, I'm waiting for some country with a fat pipe and poor US relations, say China, to run some OpenNAP servers in order to stick it to the Evil Monopolistic Capitalistic Amercian Corporation (tm). Then we'll all really find out how powerfull the RIAA lobby is.
I'm sorry, but you still don't seem to GET it. Stuff like this hosted by companies like UUNet or Qwest unknowingly does not leave those companies liable because they have NO WAY to know what their customers are doing. Napster's stupidity in all this is that they had RECORDS of copyrighted stuff existing and being transferred on THEIR servers. If it weren't for that (and the judge's related finding that they KNEW that they were facilitating copyright violations), they would've gotten away with the "ISP Exemption".
I totally agree with these posts -- a lot of the complexity of technology is driven by the general level of intelligence (or lack thereof) of its users.
Here's a real-world example one of my help-desk guys gave me a few weeks ago (I'm an I.T. Director at a company of about 150):
This guy "Fred" was using Netscape for his e-mail and always deletes his e-mails knowing they go into the "Trashcan" inside Netscape. He knows about and understands the Win98 "Trashcan" on his desktop. The problem came in because he had hit "Empty Trash" inside of Netscape and afterwards realized that he needed some of those e-mails he emptied out of the Netscape trash. He wanted to know where his e-mails were because he just assumed that after emptying his trash inside Netscape it transferred the e-mails to his trash can on his desktop. Duhhhh...
He didn't understand why it wouldn't work that way. The MIS guy tried over and over to explain that they both have trash cans but they are completely separate and after you empty the trash anywhere, it's gone forever.
I think the easier we try to make things (on computers) for people the more likely those niceties conflict or actually work against each other. In the end things seem more complex -- just because we try to make things easier and more "fool-proof" for users. Maybe a lot of this complexity will eventually just disappear (usually companies react to stupidity from their customers) if users try harder to understand how to use their computers. I mean, how many f*ckin' people out there have ever *learned* how to use their mouse properly? I can guarantee you won't have a problem using those weird iMac mouses if you have.
That may be true in small organizations, but in a big team environment, sometimes the guys at the low-end of the totem pole get stuck with the crappy duties over and over again. Once you MAKE it up that totem pole, then you have more and more chance to get into the interesting projects. As an IT Director, I know it's tough to keep my guys interested day-to-day and when real projects come up the guys with the most seniority have to have first pick. The only way to fill the rest of the time without losing employees left and right is to give them more freedom in what they do and how they do it.
We may have to go straighten out some dense salesperson on how to get an attachment out of an e-mail every day (sometimes several times a day), but you can balance that by allowing the guys to work on new company-related projects when they have time (with the idea being that they'll come up with some new and innovative way of doing something that'll help the company and shine the spotlight on them) and also flex hours helps! We've had a couple of employees straight out of college with an MIS degree and, to be honest, they were almost completely useless. They sometimes felt that they were wasting time doing menial tasks (HTML grunt work, running reports, copying/archiving files, etc.), but all of these menial tasks produced an experienced MIS person after a year because those are all tasks that we've had to perform at one time or another. Somebody's gotta do it!
After that first year, then you have a chance to move up the totem pole, but don't expect that degree is going to get you anywhere immediately. Even with my BSCS degree, I still need 5+ years experience just to have my job (I have 10). That's where it comes from.
sentient -- endowed with consciousness or self-awareness.
sapient -- having great insight or wisdom.
Which do you think he meant? Usually, "sentient" is the adjective used, not "sapient", although I have heard "sapient" used before. But after looking it up on dictionary.com (and in my old-fasioned paper dictionary), I don't know why anyone would use "sapient" to describe an intelligent being.
So, couldn't a human being be sentient or "self-aware" without being sapient? Do you need to be wise/insightful to be generous? I think he's saying you need to be sentient or self-aware to be generous (assuming you don't have an English dictionary that says something completely different).
"Interesting", but who is going to *collect* these charges and how are they going to do it? Ask any A/R person (accounts receivable) how much more difficult it is to collect payments when the invoice is sent 1+ days late. Then ask them how difficult it'd be if you suddenly required long-time customers to *pay* for something they've always received for free.
Or, I just thought of this, what about differing fees according to the sender's country of origin? In Vietnam, I can buy a REAL can of Coke (who cares if the writing is Vietnamese, it's Coca-Cola!) for $0.02! What would the e-mail fee be there, $0.005 per e-mail? All these companies, scum-bags or not, would move their spamming operations to the poorest countries and virtually eliminate the effect of your idea -- who cares if it costs $50 to spam 10,000 targetted recipients???
Yeah, I remember how it is to be idealistic, but this idea just won't fly in the real world. Remember, there are a LOT of people out there sending spam. A variation on your idea, though, might be to simply have unlisted e-mail addresses. If you want your e-mail address to be unlisted (like a phone number) then all e-mail except from those in your addressbook file would be automatically refused. You could still have a spam account on Yahoo (or have a "trash" or "public" account for public use on your own server). You can really do this today if you have two e-mail accounts, one for the public and one "unlisted" one, but that's not perfect. You still need a way to ban unauthorized e-mails at the server level so the most important mails get through.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that was one of those posts I sometimes see and say, "WHAT???"
When I used a Mac, I ended up testing OpenOffice in Windows under VirtualPC, so it doesn't make any sense that it would run better on the Mac now. A look at OpenOffice.org will tell you that the current OS X release is an Alpha release -- hardly what I would want to mass-deploy (not if I value my job, anyway)!!!
Too bad you didn't post with your real identity because you could be my twin. I left college years ago to pursue opportunities that wouldn't come again, I ended up as the I.T. Director for this $100 million company, then I went back and finished my degree at the University of Phoenix. I still have a strong, advancing career and I'm thinking of going back to get another degree -- as another poster said, they're just pieces of paper, like insurance.
The KEY is whatever strategy you take, do NOT let it significantly hurt your career. Good jobs like we have don't disappear as easily as some posters suggest, and it's damn hard to find a good job today, with or without a degree.
Well, here's what Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says:
Moon:
-- 1a : a natural satellite of a planet
Satellite:
-- 2a : a celestial body orbiting another of larger size
I think based on these common definitions that these objects, assuming they are found be natural and that they can be proved to orbit Earth, should be called moons. Maybe they don't fit our cultural, unwritten definition of a Moon, but that doesn't change the facts. So, maybe we need to change what most people think of as the Moon...
No, I think the proper description for Jar Jar in Episode II is "Big Asshole Tool of Evil".
If you saw it, you'll be glad like me that they minimized his presence, but pissed like me that this dumb-shit known as "Jar Jar" ended up unwittingly helping the "Dark Side".
After watching the movie, I just thought That's why he was in Episode I, because they had to have a scapegoat!! Kind of a lame plot-twist, though.
OK, maybe I should just let this ignorant post go, but I can't:
The IRONY of the original post is that people who CAN'T or WON'T read BOOKs/manuals will cause the price of BOOKshelves to go up. Get it? Get the joke? Ha ha! sheesh...
These price differences are pretty damn small -- yeah, if I order it I can save a few dollars (after shipping costs), but who cares?
Oh and speaking of price "discrimination", you can buy a REAL Coca-Cola in Vietnam for $0.02 -- but over there you're lucky to make over $100/month (if you have a job at all). It's not discrimination, it's MARKETING.
Another Vietnam story -- some American-born Vietnamese guys went back to Vietnam with their families and decided that the quality of the coffee there was horrible compared to what we have in America (yeah, the 2ND largest producer of coffee in the world has horrible coffee). So, they decided to do the Vietnamese people a great service and bring Starbucks-style coffee to Vietnam in a relatively big business venture.
The problem that these ignorant Americans didn't think of (yes, they were Vietnamese, but they were born here in America and have the same problem a lot of Americans have of being ignorant of foreign cultures) was that their Starbucks-style coffee ended up costing Starbucks-style prices -- $3-5/drink. In Vietnam, their standard Cafe Sua Da (iced coffee with sugar-milk) costs $0.01-$0.02/DRINK! So, these guys' primary customers ended up being American tourists -- needless to say, business is not booming for them.
This was a big joke when I told people here about this, and an even bigger joke when I talked to our family in Vietnam about it on our last trip there. Not that they don't love Americans, but the idea that they would pay even $3 for a cup of coffee (equivalent to an American who makes $2500/month paying $75 for a cup of coffee) was ludicrous.
The bottom line of all this is that simple economics is the primary driving factor of product pricing -- and for good reason.
Sorry, I forgot that it did say they studied 240 people between the age of 6 and 29.
... BOOM ... click ... BOOM ... etc.)
But, the skeptical questions remain:
How long?
What type of video games?
Are these "normal" people or do they have problems? If they already had problems before the study, then did their problems increase significantly over the course of the looonnng study?
Also, someone mentioned that strategy games involve repetitive strategy and no real creative thought??? Gimme a break, how many have you played? I haven't played a single GOOD strategy game that was the same twice! If you can boil down your winning strategy to an automated series of clicks and maneuvers, the game is crappy and will last a matter of days. You can't convince me that people sit there robotically doing the same thing over and over again for MONTHS to play these games because I've played them for years. It's not that DULL... (click
Exactly.
There are two many medical studies that draw direct conclusions from data when often the consistant occurrance of two effects together are caused by something completely different that the researcher never thought about.
For instance, people who drink one glass of wine a day have fewer heart attacks. But, maybe the real reason is that most of those wine drinkers they STUDIED make more money, take more vitamins, and generally watch their health better. Few doctors will mention that.
They also still don't know why EXACTLY Japanese women, before they move to America, have a lower rate of breast cancer than native Americans, and the descendants of those Japanese women also have a rate of breast cancer similar to other Americans (because they are native Americans at that point). Why? Because their Japanese? Because they eat more fish and less red meat than we do?
Also, with a controversial study like this, you always have to ask, "How many people DID you study and for how many years?". That important little fact seems to be absent from this article -- I've seen too many supposedly legitimate studies over the past 10-15 years that study 50 people over 2 years and call that "conclusive research" on humans. I hate to tell any scientists out there this, but accurate human research takes DECADES on a reasonable number of people (i.e. NOT 50).
When do scientists cross the line between science and tabloid news? I think more scientists need to learn...
Actually, it's about 800,000 people -- with all those 10 person families' kids leaving the state every year, they need the help (the population never rises even though the average family size is about 8).
Oh yeah, the engineering school of shame. Come on out to California, and I'll show you some REAL competition! (and I'm a SDSM&T Alumni!)
I agree that the PDA-Phone has not yet "come of age" because it's just too damn big and clumsy. Not to mention that most normal humans use a phone more than a PDA. The Phone-PDA is a much more viable solution TODAY for most people because the honest truth is that many more people need a mobile phone with limited PDA functions than they need a mobile PC with limited phone functions.
The fact is that TODAY a PDA with add-on phone functions or add-on GPS functions or add-on camera functions is simply much worse than a dedicated device. A PDA is only good TODAY as a dedicated organizer or mini-computer (Palm or PocketPC).
That's why Nokia's solutions work and the Treo solutions do not -- the reason is that Nokia makes Phone-PDA's and Handspring makes PDA-Phones.
I don't know about lockpick sets, but you can buy LED lights at Fry's here in California for about $20. They are heavy-duty, small, and very bright, so they are perfect as emergency lights (the batteries they use have a shelf-life of 10 years) for car, home, etc. You could probably use it for illegal purposes, but like ANY tool, it's up to the user how they use it.
My God, I posted a negative review for The Sims on PCGR.com (PC Game Review) basically saying what most of the negative comments in this thread have said, so I feel the same way.
But, I can't say all computer games or video games are a "waste". I have been a Sim-freak for more than 10 years going back to the first SimCity. I love ALL of the Sim games except this Piece Of Shit. Because:
THE POINT OF A SIMULATION GAME IS TO BE OR CONTROL THINGS YOU CAN'T DO IN REAL LIFE!!!
SimAnt -- Cool to control and half-way understand an ant colony
SimCity Classic & 2000 -- way cool to create and destroy
SimTower -- pretty cool to simulate the economics of a big tower, but limited.
SimIsle -- cool, but limited like SimTower
SimFarm -- same as SimIsle or SimTower
SimGolf -- hmm, cool only because there's no chance I'll ever own a golf course.
SimLife -- waay cool simulating genetics and evolution
SimEarth -- cool like SimLife, but on a larger planetary scale.
The point is that the sim/game allows you to be or do something that you probably could never do. So that's why I've come to the conclusion that only losers would enjoy The Sims because if I don't waste my time on the game I have a good chance of doing everything the Sims do in the game. Only losers would not have the prospect of ever buying stereos, big screen TV's, using certain paints on their house, or planting certain plants in their garden. Or, my God, having real inter-personal relationships with real human beings.
But then I come to the question of, "How is it that these losers have computers to play the game and post these pro-Sims messages on Slashdot.org???"
Oh well, at this point, I don't give a shit because they're losers so I'll stop trying to figure it out and get back to my real life...
Careful there, don't generalize by going from stating that "there is nothing big business will not do to grab money" to stating that "investing in stocks is a bigger gamble than playing the ponies". That's a stretch because you are equating Lucent's actions in this case to not only other big companies, but to all other companies who are publicly traded. That's an incredible over-exaggeration.
It's this kind of thinking that causes good company's stocks to go down regardless of what they are doing or how big, small, or honest they are. And that's part of what is hurting our economy now. Take statements like yours seriously because some people really are weak-minded enough to simply believe them as-is...
Hmm, sounds like Georgia Tech works at least a little like the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology (or SDSM&T), a top-5 engineering college when I went there 12 years ago. I was given an F in two classes one semester in my Sophomore year (Calc III and Comp Sci III) even though I had a B average in one class and an A average in the other. Why? Because each of the professors didn't feel that I REALLY KNEW or UNDERSTOOD the material of the class. Even though I had received A's and B's on all their tests.
... If anybody reading this is (unfortunately) already going to SDSM&T and wants the names of the professors to avoid, e-mail me and I'll let you know -- they're still there, and I'm sure they're still the same a**holes.
I was so shocked, but didn't realize until later when I left that the university actually had a policy that final grades were at the sole discression of the professor -- they have no checks and balances. So, if the professor has a problem with you, you have no choice but to take a class with another professor and accept the impact on your GPA. The Math professor probably didn't like my getting B's in his class while sleeping half the time and the Comp Sci professor probably didn't like the fact that I always got perfect scores even though I put practically no effort into it (these classes were THAT easy). So, their response was to flunk me.
Needless to say, I tried to work it out one more semester, couldn't (because, as noted above, there WAS no way to work it out -- they said "F" and that was the last word), and took the opportunity the next semester to move to California and finish my Comp Sci degree in a REAL university (Cal Poly). I honestly didn't know any better when I was at SDSM&T and thought it was my fault, but every prof and student I've known since then were very surprised that an American university had this kind of problem -- most universities would fire professors immediately for this kind of bizarre prejudice.
I don't think its a coincidence that, 12 years later, SDSM&T isn't even in the top 100 engineering colleges/universities in the U.S. The moral of this story is: talk to people who go to the university before you decide to go there, and you ALWAYS have the right to be treated fairly.
P.S.
Uum, so *resourceful* people can go look at Google.com's cached pages from the site???
w ww.doi.gov/+&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wChgG0NWazE:
There's always word-on-the-street that Apple is working on something users want -- don't believe it until you see it AND can buy it. There have been too many rumors in the past that some idiot got out of some Apple employee by getting them drunk at a popular restaurant near Apple's HQ.
Sure, Apple works on a lot of stuff and a lot of employees know about and work on that stuff personally, but whether or not that stuff ever makes it to market is always a HUGE "if" with Apple...
As a "native American" (having grown up in this great country), the only thought going through my mind after seeing and hearing the details of what happened this morning are that death can only be answered with death. You can ask "When does it stop?" all you want, but that simple concept remains and has kept us safer than most in this world for decades.
Anyone in this world MUST be made to fully understand that attacks like this one on our fellow American citizens can only be answered with the total annihilation of the perpetrators, whoever they are. There can be no compromise on this, no yielding. They must understand that when they kill some of our citizens, we will swiftly kill ALL of them in response and we will NEVER stop until they are completely destroyed. One way or another, they must understand that an act of violence like we painfully witnessed today is just not worth it.
For us American citizens, we have to remember to be strong and united. MOST non-native American citizens are here because they love this country and sincerely want to be here (I should know, my wife and most of our friends are foreigners), so racist "witch-hunts" are unacceptable in response to this event. And if the end-result of this is a war against anyone standing against us then we must ALL be prepared for those consequences. I don't want my sons to be pulled into any war resulting from this any more than anyone else, but if that is what it comes to then so be it.
My family will stand up without hesitation to fight for this country as we have in generations past -- after this difficult day, we must all remember what it means to be American citizens.
I think the point here is that it is not the NORM. I've worked at about 20 different companies over the past 15 years (took me a while in the beginning to settle on a career path) and I've NEVER seen a company-led prayer. I know America is different wherever you go, but I really can't believe this is a norm for the country as a whole (I'm from South Dakota and currently live in California and I've seen a lot in-between).
What do we do? One sentence -- don't buy it! We're not talking about life and death here; if they don't wanna play nice then we just don't have to play!
Most people don't care about it anyway and will simply dub copies via analog methods because that's the way they do it now. If the RIAA wants revenue from digital customers then they better get their shit together, that's all I can say...
You are just plain wrong on this. All you have to do is listen to the radio to hear them talking *EVERY*DAY* about the biggest Napster alternatives like iMesh, Gnutella, OpenNap, etc. I've heard these names over and over again every day on "normal" radio for the past few weeks because of the Napster trial. How do you think Napster got so popular? Word-Of-Mouth.
You want proof of this? Go to any of these big alternatives (or listen to the interviews on the radio) and you'll see they are handling more traffic in some cases than Napster EVER did. But now instead of one (Napster) there are SEVERAL for the RIAA to worry about.
Sorry, this is not going away no matter how much ANYBODY wants it to...
These other initiatives may be gaining some users, but it will be months before their combined user base is as large as napster's. It'll be a real natural selection process over the next few months as the ones that suck lose members to the ones that rock, and the ones that rock get cease and decsist orders as a result.
You sound like you haven't even looked at any of these alternatives -- check your information before posting. iMesh alone had more MP3's (number of terabytes) available than Napster ever did. And that's only one service. There's no way to attack Gnutella and iMesh sounds the same (they don't see any of the traffic to know what's going on, they just provide the link-up information to the users). They could attack these alternatives like the DVD decryption hack was attacked (attack all individual hosting sites), but the fact that I can still download it from one of dozens of places shows how futile that strategy is.
Personally, I'm waiting for some country with a fat pipe and poor US relations, say China, to run some OpenNAP servers in order to stick it to the Evil Monopolistic Capitalistic Amercian Corporation (tm). Then we'll all really find out how powerfull the RIAA lobby is.
I'm sorry, but you still don't seem to GET it. Stuff like this hosted by companies like UUNet or Qwest unknowingly does not leave those companies liable because they have NO WAY to know what their customers are doing. Napster's stupidity in all this is that they had RECORDS of copyrighted stuff existing and being transferred on THEIR servers. If it weren't for that (and the judge's related finding that they KNEW that they were facilitating copyright violations), they would've gotten away with the "ISP Exemption".
I totally agree with these posts -- a lot of the complexity of technology is driven by the general level of intelligence (or lack thereof) of its users.
Here's a real-world example one of my help-desk guys gave me a few weeks ago (I'm an I.T. Director at a company of about 150):
This guy "Fred" was using Netscape for his e-mail and always deletes his e-mails knowing they go into the "Trashcan" inside Netscape. He knows about and understands the Win98 "Trashcan" on his desktop. The problem came in because he had hit "Empty Trash" inside of Netscape and afterwards realized that he needed some of those e-mails he emptied out of the Netscape trash. He wanted to know where his e-mails were because he just assumed that after emptying his trash inside Netscape it transferred the e-mails to his trash can on his desktop. Duhhhh...
He didn't understand why it wouldn't work that way. The MIS guy tried over and over to explain that they both have trash cans but they are completely separate and after you empty the trash anywhere, it's gone forever.
I think the easier we try to make things (on computers) for people the more likely those niceties conflict or actually work against each other. In the end things seem more complex -- just because we try to make things easier and more "fool-proof" for users. Maybe a lot of this complexity will eventually just disappear (usually companies react to stupidity from their customers) if users try harder to understand how to use their computers. I mean, how many f*ckin' people out there have ever *learned* how to use their mouse properly? I can guarantee you won't have a problem using those weird iMac mouses if you have.
That may be true in small organizations, but in a big team environment, sometimes the guys at the low-end of the totem pole get stuck with the crappy duties over and over again. Once you MAKE it up that totem pole, then you have more and more chance to get into the interesting projects. As an IT Director, I know it's tough to keep my guys interested day-to-day and when real projects come up the guys with the most seniority have to have first pick. The only way to fill the rest of the time without losing employees left and right is to give them more freedom in what they do and how they do it.
We may have to go straighten out some dense salesperson on how to get an attachment out of an e-mail every day (sometimes several times a day), but you can balance that by allowing the guys to work on new company-related projects when they have time (with the idea being that they'll come up with some new and innovative way of doing something that'll help the company and shine the spotlight on them) and also flex hours helps! We've had a couple of employees straight out of college with an MIS degree and, to be honest, they were almost completely useless. They sometimes felt that they were wasting time doing menial tasks (HTML grunt work, running reports, copying/archiving files, etc.), but all of these menial tasks produced an experienced MIS person after a year because those are all tasks that we've had to perform at one time or another. Somebody's gotta do it!
After that first year, then you have a chance to move up the totem pole, but don't expect that degree is going to get you anywhere immediately. Even with my BSCS degree, I still need 5+ years experience just to have my job (I have 10). That's where it comes from.
Technically, the meanings are:
sentient -- endowed with consciousness or self-awareness.
sapient -- having great insight or wisdom.
Which do you think he meant? Usually, "sentient" is the adjective used, not "sapient", although I have heard "sapient" used before. But after looking it up on dictionary.com (and in my old-fasioned paper dictionary), I don't know why anyone would use "sapient" to describe an intelligent being.
So, couldn't a human being be sentient or "self-aware" without being sapient? Do you need to be wise/insightful to be generous? I think he's saying you need to be sentient or self-aware to be generous (assuming you don't have an English dictionary that says something completely different).
"Interesting", but who is going to *collect* these charges and how are they going to do it? Ask any A/R person (accounts receivable) how much more difficult it is to collect payments when the invoice is sent 1+ days late. Then ask them how difficult it'd be if you suddenly required long-time customers to *pay* for something they've always received for free.
Or, I just thought of this, what about differing fees according to the sender's country of origin? In Vietnam, I can buy a REAL can of Coke (who cares if the writing is Vietnamese, it's Coca-Cola!) for $0.02! What would the e-mail fee be there, $0.005 per e-mail? All these companies, scum-bags or not, would move their spamming operations to the poorest countries and virtually eliminate the effect of your idea -- who cares if it costs $50 to spam 10,000 targetted recipients???
Yeah, I remember how it is to be idealistic, but this idea just won't fly in the real world. Remember, there are a LOT of people out there sending spam. A variation on your idea, though, might be to simply have unlisted e-mail addresses. If you want your e-mail address to be unlisted (like a phone number) then all e-mail except from those in your addressbook file would be automatically refused. You could still have a spam account on Yahoo (or have a "trash" or "public" account for public use on your own server). You can really do this today if you have two e-mail accounts, one for the public and one "unlisted" one, but that's not perfect. You still need a way to ban unauthorized e-mails at the server level so the most important mails get through.